


Restoration

by Inkyrius



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Mary and the Witch's Flower Fusion, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Talking Down the Monster, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-23 09:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17681267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkyrius/pseuds/Inkyrius
Summary: The storm clouds that were continuing to gather over the catacombs couldn't be a good sign, but Ryou wasn't going to back down now. He’d promised Bakura that they’d go home together.





	Restoration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saintlysinner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintlysinner/gifts).



The storm clouds that were continuing to gather over the catacombs couldn't be a good sign, but Ryou wasn't going to back down now. He’d promised Bakura that they’d go home together. He was determined to see it through. Even now that Headmaster Akhenaden had taken the spellbook and the last flower from him, there had to be something Ryou could do.

He managed to find a hole that lead into the catacombs, close enough to the entrance that Akhenaden's footprints were visible in the dust. He followed them as stealthily as he could.

Eventually, he found himself in a room that was a bizarre mix of ancient and modern. Bubbling glass flasks sat beside ancient canopic jars, lit by torches lining the walls and some kind of moss casting an eerie grey glow. The headmaster stood at one end of the room, examining a stone slab of some sort. Bakura was shackled to the opposite wall, unconscious.

"It won't be long now," Akhenaden was muttering. Whether to himself or to the unconscious Bakura, Ryou wasn't sure. "Soon, we will have the ultimate weapon: a boy capable of using any magic. No one will ever threaten our lands again."

He turned away from the slab, apparently having found the information he was looking for. He retrieved a golden basin from the nearest table and walked over to Bakura. Ryou held his breath, hoping he would wake up and fight back, but Bakura didn't so much as stir.

Akhenaden began to chant. Ryou didn't recognize the language, but something about it made his hairs stand on end. His dread only increased when Akhenaden began to pour the contents of the basin over Bakura. A thick black sludge oozed over him, oily and shimmering faintly.

It sank into Bakura's skin supernaturally quickly. Before Akhenaden had even exhausted the contents of the basin, it began to take effect, turning Bakura's skin black. His features took on a demonic cast. His entire body grew, the shackles straining to keep up with him. Throughout the process, Bakura's eyes stayed closed, his expression unchanged.

Akhenaden finished his chant and stepped back. Ryou couldn't see his expression, but the glee in his voice said everything. "The perfect weapon," he repeated. He lifted an arm to shield himself from the shrapnel as the shackles finally gave out. "He will be unstoppable!"

Bakura's face elongated, a pair of horns growing to frame it. Bat wings erupted from his back. He finally opened his eyes, revealing them to be blood red. "Where..." His voice was deeper than usual, barely recognizable as speech. "What have you done?"

Akhenaden spread his arms wide. "I've made you powerful," he cried. "Do as I say, and the world will tremble before us!"

Bakura growled. "Pitiful fool." He backhanded Akhenaden, knocking him off his feet. "I will only ask once more. Where is he? What have you done with him?"

"I-I don't understand," Akhenaden said. He pulled himself to his feet.

"Then you're useless to me." Bakura lashed out with a newly-grown tail, cracking the stone slab Akhenaden had been inspecting earlier. "I will find him. You can't keep him from me."

"The tablet!" Akhenaden's face went pale. He fumbled in his robes, pulling out the spellbook. "I can't let you ruin all my hard work. There will always be more subjects."

Bakura laughed. "And what do you think you can do to stop me?" He reached out to Akhenaden, and the world seemed to invert. When Ryou convinced his brain to function again, Akhenaden had crumpled to the floor, his eyes vacant and unseeing. "The soul of an arrogant coward is worth little to me, but it will keep you from interfering."

Ryou couldn't keep from letting out a gasp. Bakura froze, and so did Ryou, hoping he wouldn't end up on the floor next to Akhenaden. "Ryou?" Bakura asked, his voice sounding more like his own.

Ryou stayed where he was, heart pounding.

"I will find you," Bakura said. "You can't escape me. You're mine."

Well. That was ominous, and Ryou didn't feel even a little thrill of joy at the thought of being Bakura's. That would be utterly inappropriate. He needed to figure out how to save Bakura from the thing he'd become, not dwell on whether that thing was acting on Bakura's emotions or not.

Akhenaden had seemed to have a plan, at least before getting his soul stolen. That meant that there was probably something in the spellbook that would work. All Ryou had to do was somehow get the spellbook and then find a way to cast the spell without having any more flowers.

He wasn't going to accomplish anything by hiding, though. He slipped into the room and ran to Akhenaden's fallen body while Bakura was distracted searching beneath a table. Akhenaden's fingers were still curled around the spellbook, resisting Ryou's initial pull. Ryou tried not to think about how cool that was and just grabbed the book for himself.

He glanced at the floor, just in case Akhenaden had happened to drop another flower, but he wasn't that lucky. He was going to have to do this without magic.

A thought occurred to him. It was the sort of revelation that was either inspired or utterly idiotic, and he didn't have time to decide which. He was just going to have to trust Bakura's stubborn vindictiveness had carried through into this creature. Given who Bakura was as a person, Ryou would be more surprised if it hadn't.

He flipped through the spellbook loudly, catching Bakura's attention. His eyes lit up. "There you are," Bakura said. "Join me."

Ryou kept going through the book, keeping just enough attention on the pages to look for the magic reversal spell. "No thank you." His voice only shook a little, which he would take as an accomplishment given the circumstances.

Bakura made a noise of disapproval. "You have no choice in this matter. You are mine."

"I don't remember agreeing to that," Ryou said. "I don't want to belong to a giant goop monster." The monster actually seemed fairly solid at this point, but Ryou stood by his description.

"What about our promise?" The tone was strangely petulant for a voice so demonic-sounding. Ryou could have laughed if he wasn't so focused on trying not to die.

"I made a promise with Bakura," Ryou pointed out. "And at the moment, I don't think you're him. If you want me to join you, you'll have to say it as Bakura."

Bakura didn't react.

"Besides," Ryou said enticingly. "Don't you want to prove to Akhenaden that he can't control you?"

That seemed to do the trick. Bakura held out his hand, and the blackness fell away, sizzling as it hit the ground. A single human arm emerged. "Give me the book."

Ryou nodded. "Undo all magic," he said, and pressed the page to Bakura's hand.

A red whirlwind erupted from the book. It carried away the sludge, dissolving it to nothingness. When the wind reached the stone slab, that too began to crumble. The torches lining the walls wavered and went out.

In the thin light left by the moss, Ryou could make out the outline of Bakura's body. He held his breath.

Bakura groaned, the sound distinctly human and utterly spent. "Oh good," he said, "it worked."

"It worked!" Ryou didn't think before hugging him.

Bakura stiffened. "What are you doing?"

Emboldened by his brush with death, Ryou didn't let go immediately. "Well, apparently I'm yours," he said. He stepped back. "I thought I should act like it."

"What?" Bakura made a strangled noise. Ryou couldn't tell in the dark, but he was pretty sure both their faces were bright pink. "D-Don't be ridiculous. That wasn't me talking, that was the magic."

"Oh, of course," Ryou said. "That's why I was able to convince it to let you go like that."

"...Precisely." Bakura sighed. "At any rate, now what?"

"Huh." Ryou hadn't quite thought this far ahead. "Now we go home, I guess."

"And how are we going to do that?" Bakura asked. “Remember that I was unconscious when I was brought here. I have no idea where we are.”

“We can’t exactly go back the way I came, either.” Ryou frowned. “Well, I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

Bakura snorted. “My hero.”

Ryou was about to retort when Bakura pressed closer to him, shoulder to shoulder in a way that was just too forceful to be accidental. Rather than risk pushing him away, Ryou shook his head, smiling. “I guess I am,” he said.


End file.
